The present invention pertains to a ball-and-socket joint with a housing closed by a cover, with a bearing shell and a joint ball accommodated therein rotatably and tiltably with a ball pivot, which protrudes with a shaft from an opening of the housing located opposite the cover, wherein the bearing shell provided with projections and offsets on its outside as well as an entropy-elastic, pretensioned spring element are fixed by the cover in the housing.
A ball-and-socket joint of this type has become known from DE 199 30 445 A1. The bearing shell fixed in the housing has an axially extending, continuous slot, and the cover has the pretensioned spring element fixed between the cover and the bearing shell on its inside facing the bearing shell, and the spring element is pressed by the cover against the adjoining projections and offsets in the form of radially extending ribs and grooves of the bearing shell. The bearing shell is provided with the axially extending, continuous slot to enable a joint ball to be inserted.
This slot has the drawback that material xe2x80x9cflowsxe2x80x9d from the bearing shell into the slot under corresponding axial and radial loads of the ball-and-socket joint, as a result of which the closing forces are loosened and the ball-and-socket joint tends to have an undesired clearance between the joint ball and the bearing shell.
In addition, the bearing shell must have a certain elasticity in order to press the joint ball into the bearing shell while the slot widens. Therefore, only materials that possess this elasticity can be used for the bearing shell, but this in turn is to the detriment of the wear resistance.
In a ball-and-socket joint of a different type according to DE 36 19 004 C1, the bearing shell comprises two bearing shells fitted concentrically into one another, namely, an inner bearing shell made of a soft elastic material and an outer shell made of a hard elastic material, which are provided with an opening to accommodate the grease reservoir as well as with concentrically extending lubricating grooves on their contact surfaces. The outer shell is provided with equidistant, axially extending longitudinal slots in order to enable the ball head to be inserted while a radial widening takes place. Under high radial load, the material of the outer shell begins to flow into these radial slots, as a result of which the clearance between the ball and the outer shell inevitably increases. This ball-and-socket joint is therefore limited to the material-dependent load possibilities of the material of the outer shell, here polyoxymethylene (POM), with its radial slots. An automatic, clearance-equaling compensation mechanism is lacking.
Another ball-and-socket joint of a different class has become known from DE 197 55 284 A1, whose joint ball is surrounded in some sections by a bearing shell, whose calotte-shaped inner jacket surface with its cylindrical outer jacket surface is inserted into a mounting hole of a housing, wherein the bearing shell is embedded on its outer jacket surface in a sleeve manufactured from a rubber-elastic elastomer, which is in contact with the mounting hole. The sleeve, which is obviously manufactured from an entropy-elastic material with a spring hardness lower than that of the bearing shell shall damp vibrations between the joint ball and the outer housing. Since the bearing shell and the sleeve form two springs connected in series in relation to the joint ball, their overall spring hardness is always lower than the individual spring hardnesses of the bearing shell and the sleeve. This leads, besides to an undesired clearance, to a ball-and-socket joint with low internal damping. A compensating means that would compensate the clearance between the ball-and-socket joint and the bearing shell during the progression of the wear is lacking.
Based on this closest state of the art, the basic object of the present invention is to provide a ball-and-socket joint of the type mentioned in the introduction, which, while having a simple design and a high wear resistance, is characterized not only by the fact that the bearing shell is secured against rotation, but also by an elastic clearance compensation mechanism of the ball pivot in the radial and axial directions, which it can offer in relation to the ball-and-socket joint housing.
This object is accomplished according to the present invention in conjunction with the generic features mentioned in the introduction by the bearing shell being formed by a lower and an upper bearing shell, both of which are closed, and by the lower bearing shell, which partially extends over the upper bearing shell, being provided on its overarching inside and/or the upper bearing shell being provided on its outside with the projections and offsets with which the entropy-elastic spring element cooperates in a positive-locking or non-positive manner under the action of the cover in its closed position and couples the two bearing shells with one another in a nonrotatable manner. Due to this arrangement, the lower bearing shell absorbing the principal loads may consist of a highly wear-resistant material with small clearance, whereas the upper bearing shell, which is to absorb stronger forces, can be manufactured at a low cost from the proven conventional plastics, which are softer than the above-mentioned material. Due to the positive-locking and/or non-positive entropy-elastic coupling of the upper and lower bearing shells with the spring element and with the cover, which coupling is always a spring-elastically pretensioned coupling, an elasticity of the joint is obtained, which automatically compensates an increasing clearance resulting from wear at a small clearance because of the pretension.
The lower bearing shell, which is made of a very hard and wear-resistant material, e.g., PEEK, PEI, PA 66, GFP (A3 WG6), and which extends beyond the meridian plane of the joint ball because it extends over the upper bearing shell, can thus absorb most of both the axial forces and the possible radial forces, whereas the upper bearing shell is mainly to transmit the entropy-elastic forces originating from the pretensioned spring element, which determine the elasticity of the joint. In any case, the cover acts as a tensioning element, as in the closest state of the art.
The lower bearing shell is advantageously provided at its end extending over the upper bearing shell with a flange, which is nonrotatably pretensioned between a shoulder of the housing and the cover for securing against rotation.
To increase this securing against rotation, the cover is advantageously also provided with projections and offsets on its underside, which are engaged by the entropy-elastic spring element, which couples the two bearing shells in a positive-locking manner as well as nonrotatably with the cover. As a result, the cover and the entropy-elastic spring element as well as the upper and lower bearing shells are secured against rotation in a stable manner, meeting all requirements. The projections and offsets of the two bearing shells and in the cover are advantageously formed from prior-art ribs and grooves, all of which extend radially to the longitudinal axis as well as equidistantly. As a result, the entropy-elastic spring element can engage the grooves of the two bearing shells and of the cover in a positive-locking manner and thus bring about a both positive-locking and non-positive coupling.
The lower bearing shell is advantageously provided for this purpose with a circular ring of ribs and grooves on its inside in the vicinity of its flange, while the upper bearing shell has a hood shape, which is known per se, and is provided with radially extending ribs and grooves on its outside.
According to an advantageous variant of the present invention, the ribs of the upper bearing shell have a radially circular recess of approximately trapezoidal cross section for the positive-locking insertion of the entropy-elastic spring element, with all recesses forming a circularly extending ring, which are joined by the equidistant projections and offsets. This facilitates the insertion of the entropy-elastic spring element, which advantageously consists of an elastomer ring, whose cross-sectional shape is composed of a rectangle on the outside and of a triangle on the inside, wherein all edge areas are radially rounded to reduce notch effects.
According to an especially advantageous variant of the present invention, the entropy-elastic spring element protrudes over the top edge of the flange of the lower bearing shell before the insertion of the cover by an amount corresponding to the desired spring pretension. As soon as the cover is pressed against the top side of the circular flange of the lower bearing shell, the desired pretension is applied to the spring element, which can otherwise occur automatically in a force- and displacement-controlled manner during the closing of the cover.
The entropy-elastic spring element advantageously lies by one of its triangular surfaces and one of its flat rectangular surfaces on the recesses of the ribs of the upper bearing shell and is in contact by its upper outer circumferential side with the ring of grooves and ribs of the lower bearing shell, and the spring element is always pressed against these ribs and into the grooves as well as against the optionally present ribs and into the grooves of the cover under the spring pretension after reaching its final assembled position.
The entropy-elastic spring element is advantageously made of an acrylonitrile-butadiene polymer with a Shore A hardness of 80xc2x15.
The various features of novelty which characterize the invention are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and specific objects attained by its uses, reference is made to the accompanying drawings and descriptive matter in which a preferred embodiment of the invention is illustrated.